Paul: > I find it significant that in order to make the point draft documents > rather than final ones are cited.
Actually, the passage quoted **does** come from a final version, namely, the French translation of Volume I that Marx himself oversaw. He incorporated the material from the revision manuscripts into the French version: "L'égalité de travaux qui diffèrent toto coelo [complètement] les uns des autres ne peut consister que dans une abstraction de leur inégalité réelle, que dans la réduction à leur caractère commun de dépense de force humaine, de travail humain en général, et c'est l'échange seul qui opère cette réduction en mettant en présence les uns des autres sur un pied d'égalité les produits des travaux les plus divers." Source: http://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1867/Capital-I/kmcapI-I-4.htm And with that, Marx himself states conclusively and definitively that abstract labor is a relationship of social validation constituted in a society of generalized commodity exchange and production, and not a trans-historical property of human labor as such. As to why Engels did not incorporate these passages into the 4th German Edition, that is a good question. Perhaps Engels understood exactly where his historicist reading was at odds with Marx's? _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
